Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery (3 page)

Olivia had just returned to New York after earning a master’s degree in public policy and spending a year as a volunteer teacher in Guatemala. She’d started a job at her father’s foundation and wanted to meet for dinner or drinks. At first, I ignored her calls. I was embarrassed by my life. I was a loser with no future, a disappointment even to my father, who had once believed I was capable of great things. I was fat and penniless, had no friends, and nothing close to a boyfriend.

But Olivia wouldn’t give up. Livingston’s alumni association had supplied her with my home address in addition to my phone number, and one day she just showed up at my door with a bottle of wine in one hand, bouquet of flowers in the other. Her freckles had faded and she’d lightened her hair to a strawberry blond, but my father still recognized her. “Come on in,” he’d said. “She’s in her room.”

Olivia found me on my bed in sweatpants and a baggy tee, my hand in a jumbo bag of Lays. “I’m taking you out,” she’d almost cheered, thinking—quite erroneously—that a night on the town would solve all my problems. I’d see all that was out there, all the life and fun that I could be having, and that would make me want to get my act together. I’d lose weight and get a decent job and move out of my dad’s place. One night on the town and
voila
! I went with Olivia that night because it was easier than explaining. I remembered thinking
let her see for herself
as I heaved myself off my bed to change into a push-up bra and pleather skirt. By sometime around three the following morning, Olivia had gotten the message.

But once again, she refused to abandon her cause. “Don’t worry. I can fix this.” She laid me back in my unmade bed, fully clothed, stinking of booze and sweat and the vomit that had gotten in my hair when I’d puked in the street after I got out of the cab we’d taken home.

“This?” I rasped, the room spinning like a top, my short skirt riding up to my stomach, exposing a strip of yellow lace and a hefty slab of thigh.

“You. We’ll get you back on track.”

I grabbed her arm. “Listen to me. No one’s going to hire me. No one’s going to love me. Look at me, Olivia. I’m a fuck-up. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. If I could die and know my dad would be OK, I’d do it.”

“Don’t talk like that.” She threw a sheet over my body. Placed a trashcan by my bed. Begged me to be quiet so as to not wake my father, who by then had already heard and seen too much of this sort of nonsense and should have kicked me to the curb long before. “Everything will be fine.” Olivia smoothed the hair from my head the way my mother had when I was a kid. “A week from now. You’ll see. Everything will be different. All it takes is one thing. Just one, to turn your life around.”

Two weeks later, she called with good news: I had an interview at FirstNews. There was an opening in the main newsroom, a glorified internship with dismal pay and no benefits. But it was a job in the field I wanted to be in and a great opportunity for someone who had as little experience and as few recommendations as I had.

To make sure I nailed the interview, Olivia helped me clean up my résumé and practice answering potential interview questions. She even took me shopping for a new suit—a three-button black wool jacket with a matching knee-length skirt—and sent over her stepmother’s hairdresser to give me one of those Jennifer Aniston shags everyone was wearing.

I got the job, and it changed my life, just like she’d promised. At FirstNews, I found a sense of purpose, structure, and community. I still had miles to go before I really got control over my demons, but I was on my way. I was on the right path. If it hadn’t been for Olivia, who knows where I would have ended up. I owed her everything.

I unlocked my bathroom stall and doused my face with freezing water. What if I’d bagged work and met her for that drink on Friday night? Would I have been able to prevent her death? Would I know who had done this to her?

Face beaten to a pulp. Side of her head bashed in.

Guilt formed a knot in my stomach.
I will make this right, Olivia. I will find out who did this to you and make them pay. I will be strong for you.

On the sink was a stack of tiny, lavender-scented towels, and I used a number of them to dry my face and repair my eye makeup before exiting the ladies room. Get it together, I told myself. For Olivia’s sake.

Back at the Haverford, I found the crew inside the van, reviewing the interview tape. As soon as I popped my head through the open doorway, Jen motioned to me not to climb inside. She pulled off her headphones and stepped outside. “Are you OK?”

“Not really.

“Do you want to go home? I can tell them that—”

“No.” I cut her off. I couldn’t go home. I knew myself enough to know that it wouldn’t be good for me to be alone right now. I was better off staying here, on the scene, asking questions, getting closer to the truth, getting closer to finding Olivia’s killer. That’s what was important.

“Tell me about the interview with the doorman. What did I miss?”

Jen looked at her watch. “They want you back at the bureau.”

“Now?” I figured they’d want us to camp out for a while. “Where’s Alex?” I asked, suddenly noting his absence.

“Already on his way.”

“Don’t worry, I have a little time,” I told her. “Diskin’s coming in from the burbs.”

Inside the van, she cued up the tape for me and handed me the headphones. The clip wasn’t long. After Andrew Kaminski identified Olivia as the murder victim, he said the building’s superintendent had contacted him that morning with the news. He didn’t know any other details about the crime, such as whether it had been an isolated event, what the murder weapon was, or if the police had named any suspects. Having struck out three times in a row, Alex lobbed a softball. “How are the other residents in the building taking the news?” he asked.

Kaminski scrubbed the stubble on his chin. “They’re in shock. You don’t expect something like this to happen in a place like this. Or to someone like Olivia Kravis.”

The interview ended and Jen stopped the tape. “You’d better get back to the bureau,” she said.

“Have a seat Clyde, I need a sec.”

Mitchell Diskin was alone in his office on the twenty-third floor, seated behind an elegant mahogany desk. As a former executive producer, he’d helmed the network as president and chief operating officer for over a decade—eons in television years—and built a reputation as both a brilliant newsman and able businessman.

His fingers clacked across his keyboard as I settled carefully into one of two brown leather chairs facing his workspace. Ten seconds later, he closed his silver sliver of a computer, slid it to the side, and peered at me from across the clutter-free expanse of shiny wood. “How are you holding up?”

In the fifteen years I’d been at FirstNews, Diskin had never once asked me how I was doing. And I’d seen some pretty gruesome stuff: severed heads, mutilated bodies, the kind of carnage that would give most people nightmares for the rest of their lives.

“I know you and Olivia were close,” he said, removing his glasses.

“She’s the closest thing I had to a sister,” I said, my voice breaking mid-sentence. I had to fight hard not to fall to pieces again.

Something on the grid of muted television monitors mounted on the wall behind me caught Diskin’s attention. I twisted my neck over my shoulder to get a glimpse of the news feeds as a double knock at the doorframe announced Alex Amori’s arrival. He handed Diskin one of the two Starbucks he was carrying. “Nothing for Shaw?” Diskin asked, nodding at me.

Alex lowered into the chair next to mine. “If only she’d tell me how she likes it, I’d be happy to fetch her coffee all day, every day.”

Alex’s comment would have infuriated me if I hadn’t already become inured to the network’s boy’s club culture. Still, I was glad for the arrival of Georgia Jacobs, the host of
Topical Tonight
, the network’s nightly current-events talk show, and one of my closest allies at the network.

“I’m here,” she announced in her trademark Alabama drawl, shutting Diskin’s door behind her. Her armful of gold bangles clinked together as she strode past me to stand at Diskin’s side, her petite frame buttressed against a lacquered console. “Let’s cut to the chase,” she said. Her direct manner gave her all the charm of a female Dick Cheney and had earned her a reputation in the business for being as implacable as she was irascible, but among her staff she was better known for her fierce loyalty, tough love, and uncompromising ethics. Georgia believed in original reporting, which meant that instead of regurgitating whatever was in the day’s papers or getting buzz on the Internet, which is what most networks like ours did, we tried to break our own stories. Didn’t always happen, but we gave it a bigger effort than most, and as a result had earned a decent amount of respect from our industry peers. All thanks to her.

Diskin removed a small remote from a desk drawer. He pressed a button on it that made the glass walls of his office go opaque. “As you all know, Olivia Kravis was murdered last night. I’ve already had a conference call with Monica Kravis, Olivia’s stepmother, and the family’s attorney. The Kravises are issuing us a statement, which we’ll run at the top of the hour.”

“That’s all they’re giving us? A fucking statement? You’re fucking kidding me,” interrupted Georgia. In addition to all her aforementioned qualities, she also swore like a longshoreman.

Diskin replaced his gold-rimmed spectacles. “Delphine Lamont has agreed to grant us an interview,” he said, referring to Olivia’s older stepsister, Monica’s daughter from her first marriage. She was married with two kids and lived in a brown brick building with a view over Gramercy Park.

“Which one of us is doing the interview?” Georgia asked.

Diskin sighed. “Can we focus on our immediate coverage? I’ve called in a few favors with the heads of CNN, CNBC, and GSBC. They’ve agreed to limit their coverage until we read the family’s statement. After that, it’s fair game.”

“Sort of like when Cronkite died and CBS got to go live with it first,” Alex said.

Georgia pursed her lips. “That’s awfully decent of them.”

“Obviously we have to acknowledge Olivia’s relationship with the network, but other than that, we treat this like any other story.” Diskin took a sip of his coffee.

“What was Olivia’s role here, exactly?” Georgia asked.

“She worked for the Kravis Family Foundation,” Diskin answered. “The network is underwriting their big fundraiser next week.”

“Bad timing,” Alex commented.

I glared at him.

A wrinkle appeared between Georgia’s eyes. “Olivia’s not on the board?”

Diskin removed his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “You’re thinking of Delphine. Olivia Kravis had little to do with day-to-day operations, but because the public views her as a representative of the network, any whiff of scandal related to her murder could spell trouble.”

“Oh I get it,” Georgia drawled. “This is about the merger.”

It was a well-known secret that FirstNews was up for sale. A few years ago, Charles Kravis had suffered the first of a series of debilitating strokes, after which he stepped down as the company’s CEO and handed the chairmanship to one Naomi Zell, his chief operating officer and most trusted adviser. By all accounts, Zell was capable of running a multi-platform, multi-billion-dollar media company, but Charles Kravis’s poor health, which had continued to decline even after his retirement, had spurred speculation that the family would want to cash out of the business.

Plus, FirstNews wasn’t exactly performing up to expectations. The tepid economy and falling ratings had hurt advertising revenue. The board didn’t have any reason to reject a reasonable offer from a bigger conglomerate—one that had a better shot at profiting in the current financial climate. But with a merger came redundancies and consolidations, i.e. layoffs and belt-tightening. Nothing any of us were looking forward to. Georgia was right to think that Olivia’s death could affect the outcome of any merger negotiations; murder made people reevaluate their lives and priorities. The Kravis family could change their mind about wanting to sell the network. So too might potential buyers reconsider making an offer to purchase the business if they were worried about appearing like vultures after the family sustained such a horrific loss.

Diskin tapped the tip of his Montblanc against the top of his desk. “Above all, we have to stay on message. This is a tragedy and we’re going to cover it as such. The other networks may go salacious. God knows we can depend on GSBC to go as lowbrow as they can with it, but we’re not taking this story in that direction. Have I made myself clear?”

Georgia was growing impatient. “Yes, I think we all can appreciate the deeply sensitive nature of this case. But what about the facts? Do we know how she died? Do we know anything about the crime scene?”

Alex answered for Diskin. “She was killed in her apartment. No sex play, no drugs.”

I wondered how he knew that, but Georgia clucked her tongue before I could ask. “We won’t know that for sure until the toxicology reports come in,” she said.

“What I mean is that she wasn’t found bound and gagged in a latex suit,” Alex replied. “We can cross off S&M gone wrong.”

Georgia crossed her arms, sending her gold bangles jangling again. “Too early to cross anything off. You got anything else?”

Diskin cleared his throat. “Clyde, this might be hard for you to hear.”